Dive Brief:
- After five years at the helm of one of the nation’s most troubled school districts, DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson will step down Oct. 1.
- The Washington Post reports all eyes are on who Mayor Muriel Bowser will choose as her replacement, an insider who may be able to continue the path first set by Michelle Rhee, or an outsider who could shake up the city's school improvement agenda.
- With test scores up on average, large achievement gaps remain a major concern in the district, though Henderson is credited with improving graduation rates and expanding academic and extracurricular options.
Dive Insight:
Henderson joined the DC Public Schools when Michelle Rhee became the district’s first chancellor, a position created after the school board was turned into an advisory body and the chancellor was given free reign to make sweeping changes. Rhee has been considered a leader in the school reform movement, doing battle against teachers unions and the protections they have won around seniority and tenure. As under Henderson, standardized test scores went up under Rhee’s leadership, but critics have said this has been the result of teaching to tests, lowering standards, and cheating.
One major criticism is that the decisions made by Rhee and Henderson were done so without enough input from the school community. As that factors into community activism around the selection of the next chancellor, other schools might learn a lesson from the importance of community engagement and broad buy-in for major reforms.